


The Joy of Socks

by ladyknightley



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Fluffy fic, birthday fic, socks fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-31
Updated: 2017-07-31
Packaged: 2018-12-09 11:31:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11668263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyknightley/pseuds/ladyknightley
Summary: A few days before his birthday, Harry gives a quick interview to the Prophet, and learns not to underestimate the words of Albus Dumbledore. Inundated with gifts from well-wishers, he soon learns that it's probably best to not underestimate the actions of Minerva McGonagall, either.





	The Joy of Socks

**Author's Note:**

> I was at work all day and couldn't think of an idea for a birthday fic, which made me sad. Then I was struck by inspiration on the train home, and even though the following might not be any good, I had to post it anyway, bc Harry, and trains inspiration. HBD, babe.

**_Presents for Potter: Saviour Seeks Socks_ **

_What do you get the man who single-handedly saved us all from You-Know-Who? A luxury holiday? A bottle of Ogdeon’s Finest? Soap-on-a-rope? Harry Potter’s birthday is coming up, and the_ Prophet _managed to_ _secure an exclusive interview with the man himself. We asked what he really, really wants to receive on the big day._

_“A wise man once said to me, you can never have enough socks,” said Potter. “Once you reach a certain level of fame, no one gives you socks any more. At the time, I was too young to truly appreciate the remark, but now I get it. Socks are a great gift—and I never get any!”_

_So there you have it. Harry Potter needs socks! You can send him some, c/o the_ Prophet _, and we will make sure he gets them. But who was the learned individual who gave Potter such advice? Some have suggested that [cont. page 3]_

“How many is this now?” Ginny asked, unwrapping yet another package.

“Today? Including those that were sent to work? Or in total? Because I think we must be close to five hundred pairs, by this point,” Harry replied, holding up another pair. “Ooh, look, these ones have snitches on them, that’s cool.”

“This’ll learn you not to speak to the press ever again,” she said, shaking her head. “‘ _Dear Mr. Potter, I hope you like these socks, I knitted them myself, also thank you for saving us from Voldemort, love Doris Englow, 94’_.”

“It never says that,” said Harry. She held up the note. “Oh, how sweet. Honestly though, the _Prophet_ needs to stop claiming I did everything ‘single-handedly’, they’ve never given enough credit to—dear God, those are the most hideous socks I have ever seen.”

“Don’t be rude to Doris! She put a lot of time into them, and personally I think mustard, lime green and beetroot are _lovely_ colour combinations,” Ginny said. “When did you even get interviewed, anyway?”

“Last Tuesday I was coming out of the canteen at work, and some reporter was lurking. They asked me what I wanted for my birthday, and for a moment I felt like channelling my inner Dumbledore. Don’t worry, I’ve learnt my lesson. _Never again_ ,” he said firmly.

“I wonder if he knew all he had to do was complain to the national press about not having any socks, and he’d be sorted for life,” mused Ginny. “Look, the Chuddley Cannons have sent you an entire box full of their entire range.”

“Ron’ll be delighted,” Harry said. “I’ll give them to him later, when we all meet up.”

“Great,” Ginny said. “And what about all the rest?”

“There’s got to be some charity somewhere who’ll accept a donation,” he said.

“ _All_ of these?” Ginny said doubtfully. “What would anyone do with a thousand socks?”

“Well, we could give some to Aragog and his friends, they’d need eight each so it’d be an easy way to offload a bunch...”

“Or we could give some to Mum to unravel, and re-knit into our Christmas jumpers...”

“Roll ’em up and stuff ’em in your ears when George starts singing? Or when Percy starts droning on about cauldron bottoms again?”

“No,” Ginny said, sitting up suddenly, a familiar look on her face. “ _I_ know what we’ll do.” She picked out a pair at random and put them on, even though they were far too large for her. Harry frowned slightly as she walked over to the far side of their kitchen in them, trying to work out what she was up to now.

“Wheeeeeeeeeee!” she said, launching herself forwards and sliding across the floor. She skidded to a halt, then turned to face him. “C’mon. It’s your birthday. Sock slide!”

Laughing, Harry grabbed a random pair of socks from one of the many hundreds he’d been sent, and took off at a run. “Wheeee- _oof_ ,” he said, crashing into the wall.

“You need a better aim,” she giggled.

“We need a bigger kitchen,” he countered, rubbing his arm.

“ _You_ need—oh, bugger. _We_ need to get going—we’re supposed to be at Hagrid’s now!”

* * *

“Thanks again for the cake,” Harry said on the way out.

“Ah, well, yeh know it’s tradition,” Hagrid grinned. “An’ say hello to Ron an’ Hermione for me. I haven’t seen them in ages.”

“I’ll tell them to come by for rock cakes next week,” Ginny promised.

“They know where I am,” Hagrid said. “Oh! ’Ang on a second. I’ve got something for yeh, Harry, wait there—” He disappeared inside his cabin, but returned a moment later with a very loosely wrapped present.

“Oh, you shouldn’t have,” Harry said at once. “Seriously, the birthday cake was...enough...”

“Open it!” Hagrid said, and Harry, with a half-hearted shrug in Ginny’s direction, did so.

“Oh, you really shouldn’t have,” Harry said. Ginny giggled, seeing the red-and-gold items he was holding up.

“Couldn’t ’ave you goin’ short of socks now, could I?” said Hagrid. “It’ll be winter before yeh know it, and yeh must keep your feet warm. ’Sides, I knitted ’em meself!”

“Thanks, Hagrid,” Harry said, laughing. “I appreciate it.”

“No worries,” he grinned. “Great man, Dumbledore, great man. Full o’ wisdom. Great man.”

They said their final goodbyes, and, laughing, Harry and Ginny made their way back towards the school gates. Hogwarts looked glorious in the summer sunshine, and Harry reached for Ginny’s hand, squeezing it, as they gazed at the magnificent castle. “Anyone else you want to visit, whilst we’re here?” he asked. “We’re not meeting the others at the Leaky until six, so we’ve got time, if you want to.”

“Nah,” said Ginny. “I think we should go home, and...” At first, he didn’t notice that she’d trailed off, focused as he was on how nice a day it was. Then, he turned to her and saw that, once again, she had The Look on her face. “Okay. Babe. I know it’s _your_ birthday, and everything, so we can do whatever _you_ want. But, you know how you said our kitchen wasn’t big enough for sock sliding, earlier?”

“Yeah...”

“Well...” She nodded towards Hagrid’s gift, then towards the castle, then waited for him to meet her gaze again.

“I am _so_ in,” he said.

* * *

“Ssh!” He grabbed her and pulled her into an alcove, and they both frantically tried to stifle their giggles as Professor Flitwick walked by, wearing a Hawaiian shirt and board shorts. On the one hand, it was hardly breaking and entering if the school’s main doors were wide open. On the other, neither of them had any great desire to explain what they were up to to their old teachers.

Ginny had said that she thought the longest corridor was the Transfiguration one (“If only Hermione was here, I’m sure she’d know what page in _Hogwarts: A History_ gives that information,” said Harry) so that was where they were headed. Even though neither of them had been students for several years, it still seemed strangely illicit to be sneaking around during the holidays, and the corridors all echoed oddly for the lack of pupils filling them up.

It didn’t take long for them to reach the end of the Transfiguration corridor, however, and as it was his birthday, Ginny gallantly allowed Harry the first go with Hagrid’s socks. He took off at a run, and managed to slide about four classrooms along. “ _Pathetic_ , Potter!” she cried.

“Oh, you think you can do better, Weasley?!”

“Bring it!” she declared, and competition was _on_.

Ten minutes in, Ginny had managed the longest slide (eight classrooms, nearly two thirds of the corridor) but Harry had the best consistency, managing six classroom lengths or more every time to Ginny’s five. “No fair,” Ginny panted, handing him back the socks. “You’ve got more momentum!”

“Get fatter then!” Harry called, then yelped as she launched herself at him, grabbing hold of his shirt to try to hold him back. “ _Now_ who’s not playing fair?!”

“Who said anything about fair?!” she replied. “You think just because it’s your birthday I’m going to go easy on you—ahh! No tickling, no tickling!”

“I’ve an idea,” he said, pausing for a moment to catch his breath. “What are your opinions on piggybacks?”

“Oh _yes_ ,” Ginny said, eyes lighting up. “On three?”

“On three,” he confirmed. “One...”

“Two...”

“ _Three_!” they both took off running, Ginny launched herself at his back and clung on for dear life, the two of them went sailing down the corridor, shrieking with laughter, and—“Oh, shit! Oh no! Oh—”

_Crash._

* * *

“Potter! Weasley! What in the name of _Merlin_ is going on here?!”

Ginny realised that both her legs were still wrapped around Harry’s waist, and thought it best to extract herself. She managed it, but sent the last parts of the suit of armour they’d crashed into rolling onto the ground. An arm wobbled around, whilst the statue groaned feebly, and she tried not to catch Harry’s eye.

“I am _waiting_ ,” Professor McGonagall said, tapping her foot. “And don’t act like the fact that you’re both in your twenties—if not mentally, it appears—means I can’t put you both in detention.”

They both gulped. Professor McGonagall sighed. “Perhaps it would help if you both got up _off_ the floor, and stopped destroying my castle!”

Ginny managed to climb to her feet, but Harry, who was still wearing Hagrid’s socks, slipped and crashed into the suit of armour again, causing another round of clanging. Professor McGonagall closed her eyes for a moment, looking pained. “I should think,” she said, opening them again, “that two such distinguished former students should not, first of all, be breaking into—Potter, are those Gryffindor socks you are wearing?!”

“Hagrid knitted them,” he said, then realised this was not, probably, a proper response. “I accidentally talked to the press last week—”

“Don’t worry, Professor, I’ve already told him this was a bad idea, you don’t need to give us detention—”

“And they picked up this puff piece about socks—”

“It’s silly season, but some people _did_ take it seriously—”

“Because I remembered Professor Dumbledore saying—”

“So naturally we’ve been inundated—”

“I really didn’t expect—”

“Five hundred pairs! In our kitchen! What do you even _do_ —”

“And we gave sliding around in them a go, and it was fun and all—”

“But then Hagrid—”

“And he’d knitted them himself, as a birthday present, and how could I say no?!”

“And the doors were open, so it was just so tempting—“

“Wouldn’t put the pupils in any danger of course, but it _is_ the holidays—”

“And it is his birthday—”

“Enough!” McGonagall said, and though she didn’t really raise her voice at all, both of them stopped talking at once, unable to catch the other’s eye. “I do recall Albus’s comments about socks. He did make them repeatedly, even though every year I would give him a pair. Tartan, they were, too.”

Both Harry and Ginny continued to stare into the middle distance.

“Very well. What caused the commotion? How did you come to crash into the suit here?”

“We were trying to see who could slide furthest,” explained Harry. “We thought if we piggybacked...er...greater momentum, you know...um...”

Professor McGonagall’s eyes narrowed. “And you thought your little physics experiment gave you leave to destroy my castle?!” Neither of them felt like pointing out that one collapsed suit of armour was hardly a destruction. “Honestly, I thought better of you both. Birthday or no, Mr Potter, I’ve half a mind to put you in detention. And don’t you look so smug, Miss Weasley! I’d put you in, too. Have you any idea the injury you could have caused yourself? If you’d been out for part of next season, you know very well Tutshill might have caught up with the Harpies, and I have ten Galleons on you retaining the Cup!”

Ginny looked suitably chastened.

There was an awkward pause, where no one said anything. “Right,” said Professor McGonagall briskly. “Mr Potter, please give me your socks.” He thought—for a millisecond—about protesting that they were a birthday present, but thought better of it and handed them over.

Professor McGonagall accepted them, then eyed them thoughtfully. Harry and Ginny exchanged a glance. “Miss Weasley. May I have an arm?” After a moment’s hesitation, Ginny held out her left, and said nothing as Professor McGonagall held onto it as she first removed her shoes, then put on the socks.

“What was the record?”

“I...what?”

“How far did you get, before the incident?”

“Ginny managed to reach the eighth classroom down, but...Professor, you can’t—”

“I can’t _what_ , Mr Potter?”

“I mean, um, what we found worked best was if you take off at a run, then slide,” Harry said at once.

“Very good,” said Professor McGonagall. Very carefully, she walked over to the far wall.

“She’s not serious?!” Ginny mouthed at Harry. He could only shrug.

Professor McGonagall took a few deep breaths. Then, she took off running. The two of them could barely believe their own eyes as she slid gracefully down the corridor; once she bested Ginny’s record, they started to cheer her on, although their cheers quickly turned to cries of alarm as she kept going, heading towards the far wall—she was going to crash—

They gasped in astonishment as, at the very last second, she performed a skid turn, looping back on herself as she came sliding back up the corridor towards them. They whooped and cheered as her momentum dissipated, and, finally, she came to a gentle halt before them. Harry stuck his fingers in his mouth and whistled like he did at Harpies matches, and Ginny clapped and cheered along with him.

Professor McGonagall gave them one single, tiny nod, then bent down to remove the socks. She folded them neatly, and returned them to him.

“Happy Birthday, Mr Potter,” she said.

**Author's Note:**

> also, HBD and thank you to JKR <3


End file.
